Origins of Sociology - Lecture notes 2 PDF

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Where sociology came from and how it plays a role in studying human behavior....

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Origins of Sociology Sociology is one of the youngest academic disciplines from powerful social forces such as social change (industrialization, urbanizations, political revolution, etc.) and science (Copernicus, Galileo, and Isaac Newton. Albion Small created the United States’ first department of sociology in 1892 at the University of Chicago. Peter Berger was responsible for seeing the general in the particular. Sociologists define general social patterns in particular individual’s behavior. People are unique but society shapes us into ‘kinds’ of people. Seeing the strange in the familiar is giving up the idea that human behavior is simply a matter of what people decide to do. Sociological Imagination Wright Mills (1916-1962) A particular way of viewing and understanding the relationships between personal experiences and events and conditions in society. This allows us to see that society is not given or to be taken for granted but as the outcome of personal experiences and interactions among people. Human behavior is shaped by groups to which we belong and the social interactions that take place within these groups. All people have different social experiences. They have different understandings of the nature of the social world in which they live. Events have different levels of meaning which leads to different responses among people to the same events....